Trapped Forever

[Qwerty]

This takes place shortly before the current events in NGI. The basic story is that the Nonjas had a second base in Antarctica. This base was safely sealed off when the nanobots invaded, but the nanobots removed their communication equipment. They also have a low-level AI that is essentially a copy of an early version of VIROS. This is based off of a chat RP thing VIROS, Veers and I did. Should be interesting to see a more small-scale RP (no warring nations here) set in the postmodern universe.

The base is powered by a fusion core and has life support systems that can power the remaining base for more than the lifetimes of the ocupants. In the chaos of the initial event, nanobots leaked into the base. Only the higher officers (and thus independently-thinking ones) were left, in a small series of rooms and life-support systems located around where the Inner Sanctum is. Outside, there are many repair nanobots, but they are inactive.

The problem is, both the fusion core and the base-controlling AI were damaged in the initial swarm, along with the shockwave of the nuclear detonation of the nearby base. The life support system is also damaged. It's up to you to figure out how and fix it.

As the game starts, the officers are waking up in their base, with no idea of their situation. The lights are dimmed, there is a red light flashing, and the computer is beeping.

[Vertigo]

*walks towards computer and inspects it*

[V.I.R.O.S.]

All terminals in the base say this:


Mk. II VIROS OS: V. 2.57

Last Updated: !@# Yrs.

Commands: Help, Login, Logoff, Security, Status, Directory, Search, Support, Install, Record, Play, Delete, NewTextFile, Open, Activate, Deactivate, Update

Main Systems: Onboard Repair (Offline), Inner Sanctum & Computer (Online), AI (Offline), Base System (Partially Online), Tactical Calculator (Offline), HQ Controls (Partially Online), Primary Generator (Offline), Auxiliary Generator (Partially Online), Security (Offline), Industrial Sector (Offline), Life Support (Partially Online), Communications (Offline), Terminal System (Online)

[Qwerty]

I am Nonja 3325236, AKA Dvorak, a faithful member of the Nonja party.

---

Agh, my head. I'm going to medical bay to see if they have some pain medication.

*Tries to open the door*

Or not... You, what do you remember? Where's the admiral? Computer, damage report!

*walks up to the computer*

Ah. That... would be a problem. I'll try to get the camera display of the... nevermind, security is offline.

[Vertigo]

* Attempts to open the locked door using the Base System*

[Qwerty]

What's the last thing you remember? I remember taking the admiral off duty, watching the security feeds, seeing red lights start to go off, seeing some kind of grey goo eating at the surface station, then feeling a massive shock of some sorts. Now I'm here and the lights are all gone for some reason.

[V.I.R.O.S.]

*The door Vertigo is attempting to open briefly slides open, closes, then opens again, closes once more, and then jams itself about half-way open with sparks shooting out of the sides. The corridor outside of the door is mostly dark and only occasionally lit by the flashing lamps.*

[Vertigo]

Er...

*Vertigo nervously shifts around while feeling his crack pipe through his pocket*

I was just....in this room doing...normal duties. You know, typical nonja stuff, nothing to do with getting high.

[Qwerty]

Wait... primary power supply is off. Oh crap. Our fusion generator is in trouble. Quick, help me get the AI back online, we need to check the damage.

[Vertigo]

And how exactly do I embark on that? My forte isn't exactly what you'd call engineering. I'm a military man, fighting and such.

[Qwerty]

Fine, but... oh, wait. With only auxiliary power, the AI won't have the power to run. We need to go patch the thing up manually. It's on the level below us, let's head out to the elevator.

*heads to the terminal*

Auxiliary reactor status.

[Vertigo]

Go on ahead then, I'll watch the rear flank. Something about this situation gives me the creeps.....almost as much as when we ran out of ramen back in 02'.

[Qwerty]

We're walking through a situation that looks like it came out of Half-Life and you're worried about exactly which part gives you the creeps? I'll head over there soon, I need to check the computer for the status of the reactor, the elevators, and... well, life signs, if the life-sign-checkers are even online. Whatever happened, it must have been big.

[Elmach]

I am Halnoz Elerdon.
Backstory:
Halnoz Elerdon was Marcus's brother. Their mother died in childbirth (when Halnoz was born), and Ost fell off a cliff in grief.

Marcus thought that Halnoz had killed their parents intentionally, and abused him. Halnoz fled to the relative safety of the Nonjas.

Marcus eventually forgot about Halnoz, and began developing CANR. <insert Marcus's backstory from NI:R here>

Halnoz then ran into Marcus, and thought that Marcus was as powerful (compared to him) as he was before. Halnoz avoided Marcus for years, until he went to the Antarctic Base.

Anyways...

---

*wakes up, sees red light, goes to computer, reads message, when Dvorak mentions grey goo, thinks of CANR.*

You mentioned grey goo, right? This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. *breaks into incoherent mumbling sounding like "This cannot be happening"*

[Qwerty]

Any chance we can get Halnoz to the medical bay? Do we even have a medical bay in this part of the base? Do we have any medical staff at the medical bay?

[Elmach]

Oh, um, sorry. Gray goo triggers a psychological reaction to me. I had a very bad experience with Gray goo before. It's probably nothing. The bad experience had to do with nanobots. This isn't anything like that, probably. Probably not an experimental nanobot thingy that got loose and will eat me. Hopefully not. Probably nothing to worry about. Probably I'm just rambling about nothing important.

Oh, what I was doing earlier? I was sleeping. Before I was sleeping, everything looked normal.

Why is that door open? Maybe we should walk through it. Actually, I'm going to walk through it. Yeah.

*walks through open door*

[GloveParty]

I'm Alan Gian, my Gladiator character from NI:O., used in this. (Although he came much later in the NGI universe, when the Nonjas already had Mexico)

Blaring alarms woke Alan. "Gah! Gah! What's happening! Whoa!" Alan freaked out a bit and then sprung out into the hall with his Thunder Sword. "ALRIGHT SHADOWLORIANS HANDS U-" He looked around and saw no Shadowlorians, only other Nonjas. "Errrr... What's going on?"

[Fringe Pioneer]

*Nonja Maintenance Officer 22759 gets up. His head is throbbing painfully, but he doesn't quite know why. He looks up at the ceiling, but doesn't see anything significant. He looks around him and sees that a pair of fluorescent lights fell. Well, great, that means there's some mercury spilled somewhere from the broken lamps.

He gets up to look at what he was last working on. He can't tell, because the terminal reverted to the standard startup display, except with more things offline than usual. Communications was one of them. Well, here MO 22759 is, alone in a moderately sized room with a computer terminal or two, with all doors closed and communications offline, and red lights flashing everywhere. Something serious had obviously happened, and he doesn't know the extent of the damage. He assumes the worst and believes himself to be the only survivor of whatever happened.

He can easily open the doors by removing a panel and setting the doors to manual override, but who knows if there was a carbon monoxide flood or some other threat outside the doors? He had a walkie talkie, as prudent officers should to communicate quickly with each other, so he kept that on just in case he was wrong and there was someone else communicating on the same frequency.*

[sparkpowder]

This is Nonja General #276121A7.

I suddenly remember I have a flashlight, electrical wires, and a Power Flower Super F2R battery in my backpack. I take them out, put them together, and I make a nice electricity generating, lighting, and repairing chainsaw.

I then use it to zap my laptop back to life. However, the only thing it is capable of bringing online is the security door. But I do not know the security code, so I cannot bring it up.

[Qwerty]

Dvorak: Wait, our communicators! Inter-base communication still works fine! Intercom is down, but ah well.

*presses button*

I'm sending this message on all frequencies. A disaster of unknown type and scale has occurred. Many of our vital systems are offline, and our auxiliary generator is damaged. Do NOT return to the surface, I repeat, do NOT return to the surface. Some form of grey goo has eaten our main comm system and we don't know how deadly it is to human exposure. Admiral, do you read?

*static*

Admiral?

*static*

We have to assume the admiral is either dead or unconscious. Quick, all Nonjas respond in order. We need to see who is still conscious out there. We've got three in he- four in here, with one exiting to the elevators.

(OOC: This base is designed slightly differently. There were some unexpected geological anomalies where the third floor was supposed to be built, so from the second floor a slanted hallway was build leading to the central elevator and a smaller one was used in the main base. The counterweights are in another shaft between the two elevators. In the shockwave, the second floor and hallway collapsed, as well as the central counterweight shaft. The elevator that was left is locked in place due to its own security measures and there's no way that thing will move without a new counterweight shaft. Everyone on the second floor and above, Admiral included (he was the base operator), has died. If they were lucky, falling debris fell on them. If unlucky... Well, that grey goo isn't just metal-eating.)

[sparkpowder]

I look for and find a note containing the security code. I enter it, and...

ACCESS GRANTED

With a sigh of relief, I use the GLOBALFREQMSG command to send this message:

This is Nonja General Sparkpowder. The ship has been attacked by grey goo. Do not exit until the threat is cleared. I repeat, DO NOT. My bots are clearing the goo off at a rate of 1 square inch per minute, and should complete in about 3 years from this date.

And then I activate the Emergency Defense module.

[Fringe Pioneer]

*Maintenance Officer 22759 hears something coming from his walkie talkie. Apparently, there were others. He responds.*

This is Maintenance Officer 22759. I'm in room *OOC: Randomly generated number* 283 on the second floor. Are the corridors safe to wander? Should I attempt to join your party?

[Vertigo]

*Vertigo takes out his walkie talkie, in response to hearing a message on Qwerty's*

Officer 22759, did I hear you correctly when you said you're on floor 2? That whole floor has evidently collapsed, getting to you won't be easy.

*looking at the rest of the party*

So, do we go up to the collapsed levels, or do we let him come down to us?

[Qwerty]

"This is Dvorak, former first officer, now acting admiral. Come join us if you can, but we need to get up there first. All our sensory equipment cuts off right up at the second floor, and the elevator is nonfunctional. Do you have anything you can use to get down? More importantly, are you right next to the elevator? See if you can exit and take a look around. Look for signs of a cave-in.

The door should be safe from grey goo. From what I saw in the clip, it eats metal. The door is metal. There must have been a cave-in somewhere between you and the surface."

Spark, I dunno what ship you're talking about, but we're sealed in a base. No grey goo here.

[Fringe Pioneer]

Well, it seems my post asking whether to revert or not didn't get through before Proboards decided to randomly be unavailable to me.

*MO 22759 lets takes a deep breath, sighs heavily, then goes to the panel next to the door closest to the elevator. He opens the panel, then puts on emergency manual override. Whatever emergency power was supplied to the door to keep it forced shut with motors cuts off, and becomes easily opened. He then strains to push the door open.

The hallway caved in partway and debris and beams littered most of the remaining space. Despite that the hallway fell to half its height and the walls of the hallway opposite the room buckled and crumbled to the floor, there was still enough space for a fit man to crawl through and only get a few cuts and scrapes. Save for the flashing red lights across uncollapsed parts of the hallway on the same side as room 238, the hallway was dark.*

This is MO 22759. The left wall of the hallway has entirely collapsed and the right wall is still standing, shaping the hallway into a triangle, and the space is littered with debris and ruins, but there's still enough space to crawl. I can't tell if it goes all the way to the elevator though, but I'll try.

[Qwerty]

Dvorak: "It has to go through the elevator, if it went the other way it would be full of grey goo and you would have been long dead. Proceed, but be careful when you reach the elevators. They're nonfunctional."

*after a moment*

"By the way, do you know anything about fusion reactors?"

[Fringe Pioneer]

Well, what I mean is, the other end of the hallway might be impassable because of the debris, blocking the way to the elevator. Well, I'm here now, and I'm at the elevator. Indeed the elevator is nonfunctional, and not just because of programmed emergency safety protocol like my door. What do you want me to do now?

Oh, and yes, I do know a little bit about fusion reactors: I am a maintenance officer, after all, but be warned that I'm no nuclear physicist.

[Qwerty]

Dvorak: "Okay, see if you can find some way to descend. You'll have to go down to the sixth floor, we're waiting in the inner sanctum."

[Fringe Pioneer]

*MO 22759, while crouched in what little space the hallway has, tries to open the elevator shaft doors. The left half won't budge, since it was forced downward into place during the cave-in, but the right half moves with some effort. He opens the door, and it comes off its rack and falls down the shaft ominously. MO 22759 doesn't see the elevator down the shaft, so he carefully pokes his head into the shaft and looks up. Sure enough, the elevator is there, and underneath it one of the panels of the elevator shaft was pushed backwards, thereby preventing the elevator from going anywhere.

The bad news is that, with the elevator above him, there is no cable nearby in the shaft that he could reach. There is one in the back, connected to the counterweight, but reaching it would be a risky jump. He decides to risk it and jump to grab the counterweight's half of the cable. He almost doesn't get it, but he manages to grasp it. He doesn't manage to avoid hitting the back of the shaft though, and that utterly hurt. He slides down.*

[Qwerty]

Dvorak: "Excellent, keep going. Seems to be all that counterweight is good for now that the actual counterweight broke."